


And Other Stories

by Glisseo



Series: Further Education [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Professor Potter AU, family fluff!!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-05-19 16:53:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glisseo/pseuds/Glisseo
Summary: Harry might have wanted a quiet life, but as Hogwarts' favourite DADA teacher and a father of three, quiet is pretty hard to come by ...Various stories set in the Blackboards & Broomsticks universe and starring James, Al and Lily, feat. friends and family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've really been getting into building up this universe, so while I work on Blackboards & Broomsticks we're jumping into the future here for Potter kids antics! I'm planning to post them chronologically - that's how I'm writing them. The majority are prompts from Tumblr, including this first one from the lovely Diva Gonzo.

**October 2009** ****  
****  
“What do you mean, closed?”   
  
“I mean that the nursery is not open today.” Hildith Pippery, the manager of Little Owls, surveyed Harry disapprovingly. She was a plump witch with silver hair in a dove-shaped clasp and glasses that she wore on a chain around her neck, but still managed to be rather intimidating. “We  _ did  _ send out a communication. A fortnight ago, in fact.”   
  
“Well, I didn’t get it.” Harry shifted his daughter in his arms; she was playing with the fringe of his scarf, blithely unconcerned by what was going on. “I’ve got to teach all day - what am I supposed to do?”   
  
“I’m sorry, Mr Potter, but we expected parents and guardians to make alternative arrangements when they were informed of today’s closure. Those arrangements are not our concern.”   
  
He could tell she was slightly judging him and Ginny for being such disorganised parents that neither of them had known. It was possible that Ginny did know, but in her rush to leave earlier had forgotten to remind Harry. Moreover, if Harry himself hadn’t been running late he might have discovered his predicament in good time to sort it out. Whichever way you looked at it, they’d cocked up.    
  
Bugger.    
  
\---   
  
“I do appreciate punctuality, but ten years early may be pushing it a little,” said McGonagall. “You may find some lessons hard to follow.”   
  
Lily blinked at her. They regarded each other seriously. Harry had the odd sense that a great many things were passing, unspoken, between the two of them.    
  
“I know this isn’t great, I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought maybe Madam Pomfrey might be able to look after her -”   
  
McGonagall straightened up. “Madam Pomfrey is needed in the hospital wing - Humphrey Grant attempted to transfigure himself into an octopus last night, on a dare, and currently has excess limbs.”   
  
“Oh,” said Harry. “That was a bit stupid of him.”   
  
“To put it mildly,” said McGonagall. “And I am meeting with the governors shortly. If you are able to manage for an hour, I can take her when I am finished.”   
  
“Y- you?”   
  
“Me, yes,” she said, fixing him with a look that sent him right back to getting caught messing around in Transfiguration. “Unless you would rather find another alternative? Professor Heyes is free this morning, I believe -”   
  
“No!” Harry said, a little too quickly; he did not miss the flash of amusement in McGonagall’s eyes. “No, I mean … if you’re sure it’s OK …”   
  
He looked down at Lily, rather disbelieving, as McGonagall strode away. “Blimey, I wonder what that’ll be like …”   
  
“Yut-yut?” said Lily hopefully.   
  
“I haven’t got any yoghurt, we’ve got to go and teach now, Lil. It’s the seventh years first, they’re not bad, but you can bet any work’ll go right out the window as soon as they see you …”   
  
He kept up a stream of commentary on the way to his classroom, although Lily didn’t seem to be listening - she was craning her neck in great interest to peer at the portraits and suits of armour. Inside, he conjured a heap of soft cushions and plonked her down in front of his desk. She immediately got to her feet and started to wander off.    
  
“No, no - Lilypad - Daddy has to work, OK? Can you sit and play? Look, here’s Dragon -”   
  
She took the plush red dragon from him and hugged it, frowning at Harry over the top of its head.    
  
“Ohmygod,” came a breathless voice from the doorway. “Baby!”   
  
The seventh years had arrived. They clustered around Lily like a flock of hens around corn scattered on the ground, cooing, and she gazed back at them without a flicker of emotion, sucking distractedly on Dragon’s ear.    
  
“All right, this isn’t a zoo,” Harry called. “Sit down please, everyone.”   
  
“But she’s so  _ cute!” _   
  
“Yes,” said Harry - he was not boastful, but even he had to admit that his daughter was exceptionally cute; she had insisted on choosing her own clothes that morning (“My do!”) and was sporting yellow dungarees over a top covered with unicorns, her bright red hair pulled into two untidy bunches - “but so am I, and I don’t want you goggling at me, either.”   
  
That got a laugh, but it didn’t get them to sit down, especially when Lily pulled herself up and toddled over to Harry, thrusting Dragon out to him. He crouched down and accepted the (slightly soggy) toy with the enthusiasm of one who has just received something they have longed for all their life.    
  
Lily looked pleased.    
  
“Dag’n,” she told him.    
  
“Have you been chewing Dragon?” Harry asked her. Her response was to blow a spit bubble - “so like your mother,” Harry murmured - and take off again, abandoning poor Dragon, in pursuit of whatever had caught her interest now. Harry grinned; all stages of childhood had their hidden joys, but he particularly loved this time, when they were still exploring the world that was opening up to them more and more every day. With James, when he was still an Auror, he’d missed a lot of it - so he wasn’t letting any moments with Lily slip through his fingers.    
  
He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to see that she’d gravitated towards the shockingly pink and definitely non-uniform ankle boots that Trixie, one of his students, was wearing, although the rest of the class reacted like she had just sprouted wings and started zipping around the room.    
  
“Ohh, she is so sweet,” sighed Zwena, watching Lily stroke the suede of Trixie’s boots, completely absorbed. “Can’t we just play with her, sir?”    
  
Harry glanced, wavering, at the lesson plan on his desk. This was NEWT year for them, they really oughtn’t miss any time, he thought. On the other hand, what were the chances of them actually concentrating on a word he said with Lily there? 

"Oh, go on then," he said, thinking that at least it would be good practice for those who went on to have children. Lily was utterly enthralled at being the centre of undivided attention - quite literally, when the class had moved the desks and arranged themselves on the floor around her - and happily zigzagged between the numerous pairs of welcoming arms. It was rather nice, too, Harry observed, to see the students having fun with magic as they competed to entertain his daughter; so often they were frowning over textbooks and learning spells for the sake of exams. Now these seventeen and eighteen year olds were sprawled across the floor like children, seized by fits of giggles in their efforts to produce the most interesting spectacle. He watched as Lily clapped her hands in delight at the sight of multi-coloured bubbles floating from the tip of someone's wand, and smiled.

None of them were paying any attention to the passing of time, and it was only Harry who noticed when there was a knock on the door. He called, "Come in!", and Gabe Hutchinson, one of his fourth years, stuck his head into the classroom. 

"Professor McGonagall asked me to pass on a message, she sends her apologies but there's some sort of problem so she isn't free after all … wow," said Gabe, clocking the scene before him. "Is this what we're going to be doing later, too?"

"No," said Harry, not entirely certainly, as he scooped Lily up. Gabe brightened. 

"Hey, that's the baby that got me a week off homework!"    
  
"That is her full name," Harry agreed. "We mostly call her Lily, though."

"Does she bite?"

"Not hard."

Gabe thought about it and decided he would rather not risk it. He left for his next lesson, leaving Harry wondering what on Earth he was going to do now. 

"Sir," said Zwena, apparently reading his mind (or perhaps the strained expression on his face). " _ We've _ got a free period next …"

"I can't pay you," said Harry. One of the boys looked disgruntled and picked up his bag.

"No, for free! We want to! Please? Then you won't be distracted … I've got four little brothers, sir, I know what to do with babies."

Harry hesitated; he wasn't at all sure about leaving his one year old daughter with teenagers, but he had the first years next and he doubted they'd be as keen on babysitting. For one thing, there were a lot more of them. 

"Yes, OK," he said finally, to gasps of delight from those that had offered. "There's an empty classroom just down the corridor - don't go anywhere else - and if there's even the slightest problem -"

"We know, sir," said Trixie earnestly. "We're  _ very _ responsible."

Harry doubted that, but then he had become a godfather when he was seventeen, he supposed, and arguably he had been significantly less responsible, with his habit of getting nearly killed.

The first years arrived then, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, clattering noisily into the classroom with none of the timidness they'd had just a month earlier. Lily, who had been drooling on Harry's shoulder, looked up at the sudden commotion and let out a deafening screech.

"Tegg-EEEE!"

She had somehow spotted, amongst the crowd, the light brown hair of Teddy Lupin, and reached her arms out desperately for him. He extracted himself from the herd of first years and bounded up to take her carefully from Harry.

"Hello, trouble!" he said cheerfully to Lily. To Harry, he said, "I didn't know it was take your pet to work day."

"Please stop referring to her as an animal," said Harry.

"Is she house-trained?"

"I seem to recall -" Harry raised his voice ever so slightly - "that when you were small, you would crawl around in your underpants and insist you were a dog."

Teddy flushed scarlet. "I don't remember that -"

"I can find the pictures, if you like."

"Teggy," said Lily happily, patting his head with a small chubby hand, as the assembled students laughed and Teddy closed his eyes, evidently wishing he knew how to disappear on the spot. 

\---

Harry didn't get a lot of teaching done that day; however, it has to be said that Lily was the most popular guest ever to appear in a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson - at least, until the nappy incident, but that is a story best left untold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gabe Hutchinson, of course, appears in Blackboards & Broomsticks as a first year. "That's the baby that got me a week off homework" is a reference to _An Introduction to Probability_.


	2. Chapter 2

**September 2010**  
  
It is well known that the first day back at school after the long summer holidays is, unavoidably, a nightmare. It doesn’t matter how organised you are; when children are involved, nothing and nobody will be ready on time. This is simply one of the many unwritten laws of parenthood.   
  
At one point - cleaning up Lily’s spilled milk, and yes, she had cried over it - Ginny wondered aloud what it would be like when they were packing all three off to Hogwarts.   
  
“It’s only up the road,” said Harry, fishing a sock out of the cat’s water bowl.   
  
“Aren’t they going to take the train?”   
  
They looked at each other and simultaneously reached a silent agreement that this was a discussion for their future selves, just as there was a loud _THUD_ and ensuing shout from the upper floor.   
  
“BOYS!” Harry roared, stomping up the stairs.   
  
Nowhere in the house was especially tidy, but the boys’ room was a tip. That was fortunate, because the heap of clothes on the floor had softened Al’s fall somewhat just after he had jumped off the top bunk.   
  
“ _Why?_ ” said Harry exasperatedly.   
  
Al, rubbing his grazed knee: “In my dream I could fly.”   
  
“Right. Obviously.” Harry crouched down to examine the damage, which could have been a lot worse. “That’s a dream though. In real life you need a broom to fly, don’t you?”   
  
“I have a broom.”   
  
“Yes, but you need to be on it.”   
  
He could see Al storing this nugget of wisdom away for later dissection.   
  
“Come on,” he said quickly, before there were any follow-up questions, “we’re going to be late. Where’s your jumper? Here, put it on - are teeth done? Good, let’s go down, then -”   
  
Al trailed behind, wriggling into the purple sweatshirt Harry handed him, on the way back down to the kitchen. Lily was distractedly spooning yoghurt into her mouth while she watched Ginny dash about, with about as much success as one would expect; Harry seized a cloth to catch the strawberry splodges decorating her front.   
  
“Where’s James?” asked Ginny.   
  
“Here …”   
  
James wandered in, engrossed in something he was scribbling in a notebook and wearing pyjama bottoms with a school jumper that was several sizes too small.   
  
“What’re you writing? You need to finish getting ready!”   
  
“Summer homework.”   
  
“That isn’t your jumper,” said Ginny. “That’s Al’s - where’s yours?”   
  
Harry glanced at Al, whose sweatshirt fell almost to his knees.   
  
“You didn’t say you had summer homework!” he addressed James, letting Ginny sort out the jumper problem. “Why are you only doing it now?”   
  
“I’m not, I’m just finishing it. We had to write about something we did in the holidays.”   
  
Harry waited a beat. That summer they had spent two weeks in Cornwall with Ron and Hermione, renting the same holiday cottage they had rented since Rose was a baby; the five children had loved every minute of it, spending long days at the beach and evenings sitting out in the garden with Hermione’s bluebell flames in a jar. It could almost certainly be guaranteed that James had not written about that.   
  
“I did about your birthday,” he told Harry. “With the cake.”   
  
“You wrote about Uncle George jumping out of Dad’s birthday cake?” said Ginny, overhearing. James nodded. “Did you put that he was wearing a dress?”   
  
“Excellent,” said Harry, when there was another nod. “That won’t make them think our family’s weird at all.”   
  
“Can I read it to you?”   
  
“If you can do it while getting changed, yes.”   
  
He perhaps should have been more specific, because James immediately began reading aloud while using one foot to pull his pyjama bottoms down, right there in the middle of the kitchen.   
  
“In the holidays it was my dad’s birthday. There was a big party at Nana and Granddad’s …”   
  
“Are those clean pants?” Ginny interrupted.   
  
“No,” said James, and continued, “there was a big party at Nana and Granddad’s because it was a Big Birthday which is when grown-ups are old.”   
  
“Thirty,” said Harry, stung. “Not old!”   
  
“You need to wear clean pants on the first day of school,” Ginny said.   
  
“What about the other days?”   
  
“Then you don’t have to. Upstairs, pants, trousers, now!”   
  
Harry, handing Al a cup of pumpkin juice, glanced at his wife. “He doesn’t have to wear clean underwear any other day?”   
  
“If he’s comfortable wearing the same pants every day then who am I to stop him? Lily! I don’t think Howard will like that!”   
  
Howard, their grumpiest cat, liked very little, but Harry had to agree that he was unlikely to be particularly fond of having a toddler clamp her yoghurt-covered hands either side of his face.   
  
“I yam going to cuddle him up,” said Lily, making kissy faces at Howard, who glowered back at her. Ginny grabbed him and plonked him on the floor.   
  
“We only cuddle if the cats cuddle _first_ ,” she reminded Lily sternly.   
  
“OK,” said Lily cheerfully, which meant that she had absolutely no intention of following that rule. “Kean!”   
  
“What?”   
  
She held up her hands, suddenly and miraculously free of yoghurt. “Kean ‘ands!”   
  
Harry and Ginny exchanged a look.   
  
“Accidental magic?” Ginny said, hopefully.   
  
Harry leant over and plucked his daughter from her seat. Her polka-dotted trousers were now distinctly more yoghurt-smeared.   
  
“Deliberate Lily,” he said grimly. “Right, I’ll sort these -”   
  
“Have you seen the time? We’re going to be late - I’ll get James -”   
  
Harry ducked into the living room, whipped Lily’s trousers off (she roared with delighted laughter) and cleaned the yoghurt off with a hasty _tergeo_ . Lily made a grab for his wand while he wrestled the trousers back up her wriggling legs.   
  
“I don’t think so, madam,” he told her, sticking it in his back pocket. At this point, he’d take losing a buttock; it was surely no worse than whatever his daughter might manage with a wand. “You’re enough trouble without that.”   
  
“Tank you,” said Lily gratefully, patting his cheek fondly.   
  
Ginny was shepherding James downstairs as they went into the hall. “Bag!” she said, waiting until he’d located it in the cupboard under the stairs. “Coat! Lily, let’s get your coat on! Have you got the camera?” she added to Harry. “We need to take a picture -”   
  
Harry, already weary, summoned it. “Lunchboxes?”   
  
“Kitchen!”   
  
Lily took advantage of her mother’s temporary absence to put her coat on back-to-front. James looked up at Harry, who was rubbing his temples, and crouched down in front of his little sister.   
  
“That’s not how you wear a coat,” he informed her, putting it on the right way. “You look stupid.”   
  
“James,” said Harry.   
  
“Sorry ... silly,” James amended. “Silly Lily.” He carefully did up all the buttons; Lily was unusually still, watching him with her big brown eyes, but she giggled when he repeated, “Silly Lily!” He patted her on the head like a dog and straightened up. “All done!”   
  
“Thanks, Jim-Jam,” said Harry, slightly moved by this show of big-brotherly helpfulness, as Ginny came back out of the kitchen.   
  
“James is ready, Lily’s ready - Al, where’s Al?”   
  
“Here,” said Al, from beside the front door. He was wearing his coat and holding his brand new book bag. “I’m ready.”   
  
He looked at Harry as if to reassure him that he was, truly, ready.   
  
“All right. Garden! Picture time! Oh, b- balderdash.” Ginny stopped. “We shouldn’t have put their coats on yet.”   
  
Lily was not in the picture, partly because she was an inveterate attention fiend and managed to find her way in front of the camera whenever it was out, and as such, Harry tried to explain, did not need to take her coat off once they got out into the garden.   
  
“I yave picter!” she insisted, wriggling furiously in his arms.   
  
“You’re not going to school yet,” said Harry patiently. “This is a special picture because it’s Al’s first day at school.” He watched Ginny arranging the boys beneath the beech tree: there was a framed photograph on the kitchen mantlepiece taken in that exact spot three years earlier, on James’s first day. He hadn’t been as small as Al was, standing proudly in his brand new school uniform, and he’d been almost offensively excited about starting school, so much so that Harry and Ginny had secretly been quite glad when he’d burst into tears at the school gates.   
  
Now he stood a head taller than his younger brother, grinning toothily at the camera. They were so alike in the matching purple sweatshirts of Hogsmeade Primary School, dark-haired and straight-backed, but so different in personality … Harry could not help worrying more for his youngest son. Al could be rowdy enough when playfighting with James, but he was inherently quieter by nature, preferring to observe and to consider things.   
  
Picture done, he took the camera back inside while Ginny herded their brood round to the front. It was a sight that made him momentarily stop in his tracks when he came back out of the house: his wife, hair vibrant in the early autumn sunshine, waiting for him with the three children they had brought into the world together, raised together, loved together.   
  
“Happy Daddy,” Lily observed as he rejoined them. Ginny looked up and smiled at him; he grinned back, and bent down to swing Lily up onto his shoulders.   
  
Hogsmeade High Street hadn’t changed much in the years that had passed since they’d walked James to his first day of nursery school, where Lily now went two and half days a week. Some of the shops were already open - Honeydukes would do a roaring trade in first-day-back sweets after school - while the rest were still stirring, shutters opening themselves, a watering can flitting over the window boxes of Madam Garner’s bakery. And halfway up the street was Neville, emerging from the door leading to the flat over the Three Broomsticks where he lived with his wife Hannah. He saw the Potters and waved enthusiastically.   
  
Al’s face lit up at the sight of his godfather.   
  
“It’s my first day at big school,” he said as soon as Neville reached them. Neville smiled at him.   
  
“I know, and I was hoping I’d see you so I could wish you good luck. It’s a bit scary, isn’t it?”   
  
All summer, people he met had been asking Al if he was excited for school, which Harry thought had made him rather more anxious, deducing that he _should_ be excited and it was wrong to be nervous. Now, he fixed his godfather with an intense gaze, and eventually nodded.   
  
“A bit scary,” he agreed.   
  
“Perfectly normal to be nervous. James was, weren’t you?” said Neville, encouragingly. James bounced up and down on the balls of his feet and nodded vigorously.   
  
“Yeah! But then the teachers are really nice and you make friends and learn lots of things! And,” he added, suddenly looking far more mature than his age, “you’ll be OK, Al, ‘cause I’m there too, and if anyone is mean I’ll hit them with my broom.”   
  
“You will not,” said Ginny sternly. “Right attitude, Jim-Jam, but no hitting.”   
  
“Oh, yeah,” said James. “Kicking is better.”   
  
“I can’t wait ‘til you come to Hogwarts, James,” said Neville, grinning at Harry and Ginny. “Professor Heyes will love you.”   
  
Cadmus Heyes was a fellow teacher with a particular dislike for (in no particular order) students, joy, and Harry. Since Teddy had started Hogwarts last year Hayes had accused Harry of giving him special treatment on numerous occasions, and Teddy, Harry thought apprehensively, was actually well-behaved.   
  
Neville wished Al good luck again and carried on up towards the castle, and the five Potters turned into the lane leading to Hogsmeade Primary, a pretty stone building with wide green playing fields overlooked by Hogwarts. The playground was already filling up with parents and children. Some gave the Potters a lingering look, but many of them were now used to Harry and Ginny’s presence in the playground, and didn’t give them a second glance. Miss Hubble - the reception class teacher - did, however, and she headed over towards them.   
  
“Here comes your teacher, Al,” said Harry, setting a comforting hand on his youngest son’s shoulder. “She’s very keen on good behaviour, so none of that screaming and smashing stuff you do at home, OK?”   
  
As he’d hoped, that got a smile.   
  
“Whatever you do, sunshine, we’ll be proud of you,” said Ginny, crouching down in front of Al. “After all, _we’re_ your mum and dad - of course you’re going to be amazing at school.”   
  
“Will you pick me up at hometime?” Al asked tremulously.   
  
“No, we’re going to leave you there overnight,” Ginny teased gently. “Of course we will, popkin. And James will look after you at school as well.”   
  
“Yep,” said James, puffing out his chest in a way that reminded Harry strangely of Percy. “Can I go and show my homework to Mrs Harlock?”   
  
“ _No!”_


End file.
